Saturday, 22 February 2014

Now that Eddie Jay is in charge of his backup crew of astronauts, it's clear that a little team-building is essential - so what better way of doing this than letting them talk openly about themselves to the others?

It's Betty who becomes are focus within this activity as her story is clearly the most unique, and also a new one to Mutta. In short, as well as a prospective astronaut herself Betty is also the wife of Tuck Ravel, one of the three astronauts killed alongside Brian Jay in the re-entry accident which has already had a pivotal role to play in other aspects of the series. Following this disaster Betty shelved her dreams of reaching the Moon largely so as not to worry her and Tuck's young son, but as his love of space showed no sign of waning even after his father's death she has decided to get back on the proverbial horse and once again plunge into life as an astronaut.

Meanwhile, Vincent Bold continues to be his usual detached and impatient self, while friend and engineer Pico makes a return as he gets to demonstrate a rather innovative new spacecraft design to both main and backup crews on the next lunar mission, in turn fulfilling a promise that both Bold and Pico made to their lost friend.

These two points combined to make this a great example of Space Brothers at its best - even though the crux of Betty's tale was immediately clear from the offset that didn't make it any less heart-rending in both story and execution, and the mixture of stand-out characters and smart engineering ideas depicted in the episode's second half are also one of the things that Space Brothers does incredibly well. Even though it can misfire on occasion it's efforts like this that serve as a perfect reminder of why I love the series even nearly one hundred episodes down the line, and if it can afford similar treatments (albeit understandably less dramatic) to the rest of Mutta's crew-mates then things are looking up once again.